Tuesday, December 25, 2012

While doing some research for future blogs, I came across this table that should help you when running missions. It is very important to adapt the damage type you want to inflict to your enemies and the one you can better resist considering the NPC ships you expect to encounter

The following tables should be helpful in deciding which modules to install in your ship before undocking for a fight.Note: Percentage of damage inflicted is calculated taking into consideration the type and amount of damage per second (DPS) of each ship and turret used by the faction/corporation weighted on the frequency of its spawn.

Pirate Corporations

Angel Cartel

Damage to inflict: Explosive

Damage to resist: Explosive, Kinetic

Blood Raiders

Damage to inflict: EM

Damage to resist: EM, Thermal

Guristas

Damage to inflict: Kinetic

Damage to resist: Kinetic, Thermal

Mordu's Legion

Damage to inflict: Kinetic

Damage to resist: Kinetic, Thermal

Sansha's Nation

Damage to inflict: EM

Damage to resist: EM, Thermal

Serpentis

Damage to inflict: Kinetic

Damage to resist: Thermal, Kinetic

Empire Factions

Amarr

Damage to inflict: EM, Thermal

Damage to resist: EM, Thermal

Caldari

Damage to inflict: Kinetic, Thermal

Damage to resist: Thermal, Kenitic

Minmatar

Damage to inflict: Thermal

Damage to resist: Explosive, Kinetic

Gallente

Making ISK is your next task. There are many different ways of doing this, and how you do it will be determined by what you and your corporations’ vision are. If you’re going to be PvP’ers, I will be up front and honest about the fact that this is not something I am all that familiar with, but will do my best to convey what I think could possibly help you. If I am way off, maybe someone will comment as to what would be better.

You must realize as with any venture, your ability to have patience and to learn to walk before you can run is very important. Trying to do more than your able to do, over extending yourself, and flying something you can’t afford to replace can set you back, and cause you to start over from the beginning. To avoid doing this, have a plan in mind, take it step by step, and work towards the end result while taking care of any problems that may arise. It may sound like common sense, and an easy task, but you will be surprised at some of the things that my pop up as you try to build your corporation.

Starting with the industrial route may be the best way to go, you can get started fairly easy, and you don’t need a lot of skills or ships to start turning out the ISK. I would recommend that at least one person in your Corporation has good refining skills, if not, have someone working that angle since it will benefit you greatly. The easiest way to start making ISK is to go out and mine ore. Once you have a good amount of it you can try selling it on the market, but better yet refining the ore and selling the minerals will make you a little more ISK. We started out that way. We would mine hundreds of thousands of ore, refine it down and sell it in Jita. We did this for months, and every time we went to Jita the Corporation wallet grew.You have to also provide some incentive to your miners. You can’t assume that they are going to just give you their ore without some form of payment themselves. What we did was to provide corporate contracts for their ore at 6.5% below Jita buy price. Granted it was less than if they took it to Jita themselves, but they had no need to refine or haul their product, all they had to do was mine the ore, sell it to the corporation and go back to mining, easy money for them, and the corporation took care of the rest. This is where patience takes over, do not get to the point that you think you have to move forward before your ready, set yourself a goal of a certain amount of ISK. Once you meet this goal, go on to your next step. We did this when we were planning on building a jump freighter. Our goal was to build three freighters and sell them before building the fourth that would be used in the production of the actual jump freighter itself. This allowed us to accumulate enough ISK to afford some researched blueprint originals, and the T2 materials to start building it.

Starting out trying to make ISK through PvP, or mission running is another animal altogether and requires a totally different approach. I myself consider mission running as a prelude to PvP, the ship fittings are different, but you are moving in the direction of ship to ship combat instead of mining asteroid belts. This is if you run security missions. There are different types of missions, but running mining missions, for anything other than reputation is worthless in my eyes, you could mine more ore, and make more ISK just hitting the belts on your own. There are numerous agents and types of missions available. The chart below gives you some idea of what you can expect from certain agents in game.

Division

Courier

Kill

Mining

Trade

Accounting

90%

10%

Administration

50%

50%

Advisory

66%

34%

Archives

90%

5%

5%

Astrosurveying

30%

40%

25%

5%

Command

3%

97%

Distribution

95%

5%

Finance

Intelligence

15%

85%

Internal Security

5%

95%

Legal

50%

50%

Manufacturing

95%

5%

Marketing

95%

5%

Mining

10%

85%

Personnel

Production

95%

5%

Public Relations

66%

34%

R&D

50%

50%

Security

5%

90%

5%

Storage

95%

5%

Surveillance

5%

95%

Courier missionsShip one or more items from one station to another.The agent level defines only the maximum cargo space needed and does not influence the minimum. (IE you can usually run any lvl1 courier mission on a frigate, while lvl3 missions can require from 0.1m3 to a full industrial ship cargo space)

Kill missionsFight against one or more enemy ships.The level of the agent influences the number and hardness of your enemies. Be careful when trying an higher level agent for the first times, you might be surprised to notice how harder each level is from the previous one.

Mining missionsNeed to deliver a certain amount of ore or minerals to your agent. The choice of buying or mining what you have to deliver is up to you.

Trade missionsNeed to deliver a specific item to your agent.Trade missions usually costs money since you have to buy what your agent is looking for (you can naturally sacrifice an item in one of your hangars if you already have it) but the cost is usually repaid by good agent rewards and higher standing gains.

I will end part 1 here, and pick up next time about locations, and where your corporation would be best to set up their headquarters.

Monday, December 24, 2012

What kind of leader are you going to be? I want you to know now, there is no such thing as a democracy in EvE. You will be the one that will be running your corporation. In the post I want to talk about you, not your officers, or how you set up your corporation. How are you going to act? Because this is what’s going to make or break your corporation. You can rule with an iron fist, accepting no quarter for what you expect from your members, and accepting no less then perfection. Or you can lead, teach, and work with your members to build your corporation up and make it into the vision you have for it through teamwork. Either way is viable, however you have to remember that this is a game that people pay for to play, and to enjoy. They will not accept to be continually badgered and harassed for their actions, and stay with you. I use the word continually because there are times that you will be harassed and badgered but that’s for another discussion pertaining to fleets, and fleet commanders.

I want you to remember that when people join your corporation they have seen something that related to them as a person and that they wanted to be a part of your vision. Work with these people, listen to their ideas, and comments about how your corporation is run and act accordingly. I am not saying that you have to change what you’re doing, or how you’re doing it, just to listen to what people have to say. Sometimes you will find that there may be an easier way of getting from point A to Point B, or that there is a better way to make something happen. There are people out there with a different set of skills than you have, you this to your advantage. Like the President of a nation, to the best Corporate CEO, they have learned to surround themselves with the best people that shore up their weaknesses and make the whole of their corporation / administration stronger.

Your goal as a leader should be to do what is necessary to grow your corporation both financially, as well as emotionally. Financially through whatever means you have at your disposal. I will not go into what this means, because depending on your vision for your corporation this could be industrial, or piracy. Emotionally build your members through caring what they think, and what they need to grow. Being a leader that is concerned with these things will create a bond with your officers, and members that will not soon be forgotten. Make sure you’re not one to climb over people to get what you want they will remember this and make sure you don’t do it to them again.

If something your doing is not working don’t be afraid to switch up and trying something different. The worst thing you can do is keep banging your head against a wall trying to make it work. As long as you work with your people, and your officers, and they are all working with you to build the corporation in the direction that works for your vision you need to keep it going and see how far you can take it.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

The biggest and most complex of commodities in the world of EvE Online are the people that you will be leading in your corporation. They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, nationalities, but this doesn’t matter to you it’s who they are that will matter. The people that will be joining your corporation will be one of the types we will be discussing, and I will try to give you some help as to what can be done about them.

The first grouping will be active to non-active players. Then we will look at them as individuals.

The Active Player:

These players will make up the core of your corporation. They will be the ones that will be online the most, and will be the driving force behind you building your company up.

The Want to be Active Player:

These players are mostly good people, but because of real life issues don’t have the time to be as productive to the corporation. They honestly want to be there for you and the corporation they joined, but just can’t find the time.

The Non-Active Player:

These players had good intentions when they applied, and even logged on a couple of times, but have just disappeared and hasn’t been seen in weeks. There could be a lot of reasons for this, but you have to move on, and remove them from your members list. Before you remove the member though, send them a EvE-mail stating that when they become active again you would gladly accept them back to your corporation.

These are the major differences between players as individuals, in my opinion.

The Lone Wolf:

This guy/gal joins the Corporation, and is active, but you never see him/her in your system, or showing up for corporate made events such as roams, or group mining nights. He/she is friendly enough when you talk to him/her, but that is not very often. He/she is hardly on Teamspeak, if you use a voice server. All you know is that he’s/she’s online, and doing something.

The first thing I would try to do is ascertain what he may be doing, and if there is a reason that he is acting this way. Some people are anti-social. If you find that he/she is doing things that may be against what your company stands for then drop him/her, but if they are not doing anything that could be harmful then it’s your call to let them be, or let them go.

The Veteran (Type A):

This player has been playing EvE for awhile now, and has the skills points to prove it. They are knowledgeable about most things in game, and willing to pass what they know on to the corporation to help it grow.

I would cherish these players as they will be there, and give you a wealth of information that you can use to propel your new company in the right direction. Always take care of these people, and never make them feel like you’re taking them for granted.

The Veteran (Type B):

This player has been playing EvE for awhile now, and has the skills points to prove it. They are knowledgeable about most things in game, and are somewhat unhappy about the way EvE is evolving. They may come online in a haphazard pattern, and you can never count on them to be there. When they do come online, they are helpful and guiding.

Understand what you have with these players. They are helpful when they are online, so be happy that they are part of your corporation. I would not get them involved in anything that would need them to be relied upon though as you could get caught waiting days to get that item produced, or the material they said they would get for you.

The Rookie:

Some like to use the word noob, but I usually don’t. These people are brand new to EvE, and due to the games steep learning curve will need some help learning the ropes. If you take these people into your corporation, be aware that you will need to be there with a guiding hand. We use a program of giving them the tools to grow, and an open door policy to answer any of their questions.

The Egotist:

This player knows everything, quite literally. The only problem is, they know this, and want to make sure you do too. They want to make sure that they are treated special for their knowledge.

These people can be more trouble than they are worth, you will have to gauge just how much you need someone like this in your corporation, and where he may fit in. This player can cause massive drama within the corporation, and that is something you just don’t need.

The Doer:

This player is your ultimate sweet spot, doing what he can for the corporation, and going that extra mile. These are the players that you want to groom for management positions within your corporation. They show up for corporate events, and even help out with running them. They don’t ask for things in return, and are honestly concerned about seeing the corporation grow and become something bigger and better.

These people are a great asset to you and the corporation. You have to make sure they don’t burn themselves out, and that they get the proper recognition within your corporation for all their hard work.

The Clueless:

These people are quite simply clueless. They have gone and got themselves blown up, and even after you explain what happened, and how it can be avoided, they go and do it again. There is no teaching them the right way they have to find out for themselves that EvE is harsh, and brutal.

It’s up to you to decide, how many times, is enough with these people. My personal best was four in one week.

The Taker:

These people seem good enough from afar, but as time goes on things change. Running a corporation means building up the corporation wallet, and to do that you have to have a plan. Whether that be through industrial means, or a PvP route you will decide how it’s going to happen. Takers will feign wanting to be working for the corporation, but you start to realize that they would rather use the corporation to benefit themselves, and their wallets.

You will notice this more in a low or null sec area, as keeping POS’s fueled, and the greater need for teamwork will show who someone really is quicker. They will want to use the POS’s and all the arrays they can. They will also want the corporation to buy materials that are needed to create fuel, but not put anything towards all the things needed to sustain corporate operations.

The Giver:

These people will give you there last ISK. They are giving to a fault, and just want to help out everyone. Although there is nothing wrong with this type of behavior you have to watch that they don’t get taken advantage of by people inside or outside the corporation.

If the person learns from his mistakes, and can avoid doing the same things over, and over again they would worth keeping.

I’m sure I have missed out on some types of personalities. These are just some of the types I have run across in my travels.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

There are several types of reputation, but for EvE players they are intertwined. You have your individual reputation, and that of your Corporation as a whole. Reputation with NPC Corporations is important because it will give you better refine rates, jump clone capabilities, and loyalty point purchases. When leading a corporation you need to do anything and everything possible to cut down on your expenses and take care of your bottom line.

Industrial & Refining

Refining skills coupled with a really good reputation in the station that you use for your production, and refining can save you lots of ISK. If you fleet up with one of your corporate mission runners, you can have an industrial skilled toon acquire reputation points towards the NPC Corporation you are trying to get your better refining reputation for.

Jump Clones

Jump clones can also come in handy, but you will need an individual reputation of over 8.0, or an overall corporation rating of over 8.0 to be able to use that NPC Corporation. As a CEO, you can find an out of the way NPC Corporation with which you can gain reputation to over a 8.0 and make sure no one that joins your corporation ever runs missions for them. This will keep the overall corporation reputation to 8.0 or more, and everyone can use the NPC stations to get their jump clones from. If anyone ever runs a mission for that NPC Corporation your reputation, being overall, will be an average of all of your corporations’ members’ reputation with that NPC Corporation.

Your Reputation

There is one more reputation that you as a CEO must be aware of, but even though it’s not a mechanic of the game, it is a byproduct of your corporation. Your reputation as a corporation is carried with every member of your corporation, and with every action that members does. Upon joining your budding company, every member wears a jacket with your insignia for everyone in the game to see. Be aware of what your members are doing, if you don’t condone it, or feel that they are giving your corporation a negative image then you need to rectify the situation before you find yourself in a war dec, or worse.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Communication is one of the most important things within your corporation. Knowing what is going on, and who is doing what will help you move your corporation forward. There are many forms of communication you can use, but I want to deal with written communication first. This will be your first form of communication, before Team speak, mumble, or any other Voice server.

No discussion of communication is complete without mentioning the importance of effective writing skills. No matter what you do for the corporation, at some point you’re going to put words on electronic paper. You might need to write a memo, a report, or a policy change. What you say matters; how you say it can matter more. Although writing is a life skill, not just a job skill, many people turn into babbling bureaucrats when they write. There's no reason for you’re writing to be any more convoluted than talking. In fact, it can be easier to write because you focus just on your presentation. In fact, it's as easy as three steps that you can view as your AIM:

·Audience: Who will read your message?

·Intent: Why are you writing?

·Message: What do you have to say?

Make separate lists to answer each of these three questions. Then use your lists as an outline and begin writing. Write as though your audience is sitting in front of you and you are talking to them. Hold the slang, but stay conversational. Write enough content (your message) to cover your intent — no more. Be sure the vocabulary you choose is appropriate for your audience; steer clear of jargon.

Don't let the process of writing intimidate you. It's just another form of communication. The best way to begin writing is to start with what's on your mind. Keep in mind that you don't have to start at the beginning. You can rearrange your blocks of words after you get them down on screen. Often one idea flows into the next once you get started, leading you through all of what you want to say. And remember, nobody gets it just right the first time. Writing is a process of editing and revision. If you don't like the way something sounds, change it.

Keep It Concise

To keep your focus clear and clean, make sure every sentence contributes to your intent and message in a way that is relevant to your members. The poor yield from the mining operation last week was interesting, but the members receiving your mail just need to know the problems and the suggestions for remedying them. The typical member gives a mail about eight seconds to prove itself worthy of further interest and more time. Brevity counts!

EvE-mail Issues

Ironically, it's the proliferation of electronic communication that most graphically illustrates the need to address writing skills. The speed with which we can zip messages across the EvE Universe makes us behave as though we must take every available shortcut to save even more time, circumventing the processes that effective writing requires. The instantaneous nature of EvE-mail makes us feel as though we have to read and write at the same speed. But we don't (and can't), and trying to is often a direct route to misunderstanding. The same guidelines for effective communication on paper apply in the paperless environment of cyberspace.

Because e-mail is instantaneous, it's easy to fire off responses and comments without thinking about potential ramifications. The fact that most of us delete EvE-mail messages once we've read or sent them gives the impression that they are temporal communications, existing only in time just like conversations in person or over the phone (and just as private). Wrong! This is a common and potentially hazardous belief. Any mail you send can be forwarded to anyone in the game.

If you wouldn't write something in a letter or a memo, don't write it in an EvE-mail message, either. With Mailing lists and the ability to forward, the message you send to your members “for your eyes only” could end up on hundreds of other computers. EvE-mail messages have embarrassed CEO’s and miners alike, and they are an increasing source of evidence in Diplomacy issues. That offhand comment you fire off in response to a question about someone's screw up could become an electronic ghost that returns to haunt you days or weeks from now.